#DigitalLunch: Song For Lily Mae, Generation Z and why we don’t have to go to war any more…

If you want to join us in whatever is we get to talk about, so long as you have gmail, Google Plus or even a YouTube account (and have downloaded this app), you can jump in here… We’re live from 1pm, or whenever after that we have quorum..

No agenda this week, you get to set it for us? You can pick it up here or on YouTube…

Stuff we talked about…

– Andrew Gallagher joined us who was involved in putting today’s Number One song in Ireland, Tiny Dancer together for a cancer charity (Facebook page, here)…

He argues that people are becoming more open because the rewards for openness in a free network outweigh the need protective need for privacy in an era when governments (and big business) were all powerful and citizens all vulnerable…

“…what we are seeing here is a perceptable shift in the way we approach connectivity and the world in a more open way. Absolutely everything in terms of data, shares values, shared opportunities, knowledge, information.. It is actually shifting the whole world [so that] it now has an inherent element of trust.

Today in an open world, whatever the government does there the whole world knows about it immediately. It’s not that we don’t care as much [about privacy] it’s that we are more willing to put things out there because we can see the benefits.

If we step back and look at the bigger picture, it doesn’t make sense to go to war any more because we have more to lose than actually gain. There was a point in the past where war made perfect sense because you could get raw materials, new markets.

Whatever you lost in terms of soldiers the damage was transient because in the next twenty, thrity forty years you had something to gain through. War is a losing proposition now, no matter who actually wins. So we are less likely to actually go to war.

Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty